fxguidetv from IBC: Flame Premium + Full Length 2011×1 Feature Videos

By John Montgomery

September 9, 2010

Our first IBC episode is up with news from the show regarding Autodesk. The company today introduced Flame Premium, which is effectively a bundle of Flame, Smoke Advanced (with an Action that includes all Flame creative tools), and Lustre. The software package is list priced at $129,000 in the states. Upgrades to the premium version from "regular" Flame are $10,000 and $25,000 to upgrade from Smoke Advanced, Flint, or Lustre.

fxguidetv episode #91 has interviews with Mark Hamaker and Marcus Schioler from Autodesk discussing the reasons behind the move. We also speak with Tim Crean, flame artist and partner at Suspect in New York City, and Chris Hengeveld, a smoke editor at Northern Lights Post. They discuss why this move is interesting from both a business and artist perspective.

In addition, the episode also includes our annual overview of the of the IBC flame/smoke extension release with Philippe Soeiro, Autodesk's Lead Product turk porno Designer on the products. If you'd like to see the full-length versions of the overview, visit the fxguide YouTube channel for uncut versions.

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YAY!! YUV Blur, I cannot tell you how many clients ask for the ‘Henry’ blur…..

Posted by ChrisbiLoura on
September 11, 2010 at 12:09 am

OK John, Sorry.

Posted by ENOG on
September 11, 2010 at 1:30 am

It’s the best news since 10 years, “will be selling Lustre/Smoke combo”
All of us here in Europe are waiting for them on the same machine !
But not on Linux ):
Is there a light to see that best team of the world, one day on OSX ?

Posted by quiete on
September 11, 2010 at 3:29 am

Slowly it (the Flame) is getting nearer and nearer to our facility…and since we`ve been evaluating Smoke it`s an even more interesting package…adding Lustre to the whole deal makes it nearly irresistible

anyway good job

Mais vous pouvez faire encore mieux …

G

Posted by gabreil on
September 11, 2010 at 7:32 pm

Without a doubt, it’s nice to have access to all the premium software packages. But in reality, how many people out there are well-versed enough to be a “one man/woman band?” Merging the abilities that Flame has into Smoke would be obvious. Adding Lustre is nice, but I find the business model a bit puzzling. Anyone remember Quantel’s “Maya on Quantel” software offering?

Posted by Dr. Zillman on
September 11, 2010 at 11:17 pm

IBC 2010
By any chance, someone knows why the AREA TV – On Demand dooesn’t work ?
thanks in advc

Posted by quiete on
September 12, 2010 at 5:48 am

I think when looking at Flame premium you need to take into account around $1k a year in subscription fees, plus the addition costs for Burn, plus the $10,000 for SapphireSparks, Plus Hardware, Plus……………………………

And given it’s all on the one box it’s not like you can run three jobs at once (one Flame, One Smoke, One Lustre) to cover the additional costs.

I’m finding really hard to see any real benefits…..

Posted by qwertyKeyboard on
September 13, 2010 at 1:06 am

I think it’s an easy financial decision actually, since having 3 flame suites that can now act as editorial, or grading, or comp (assuming you have the systems installed) for a fraction of the cost prior to Premium.. granted, the license doesn’t work across 3 separate machines, but there will be times that 3 rooms need to work on VFX, or maybe 2 rooms are grading while one is conforming.. if you don’t have endless space to install suites, it becomes easy to do the math.

Posted by Glenn Capps on
September 13, 2010 at 12:04 pm

But why not just grade in Flame?? Why not edit in FCP where you have a much stonger freelance pool?? I can see the advantages from Autodesks side as a lot of people will jump on it thinking they have an advantage giving Autodesk a large cash hit.

Posted by qwertykeyboard on
September 13, 2010 at 5:53 pm

AND ANOTHER THING!! (I say Jokingly….) If they had of brought out a version of Smoke with a Full batch and a Lustre Module/Node so you don’t have to jump between apps, now that would be cutting edge and worth buying.

……………………………………………

Posted by qwertykeyboard on
September 13, 2010 at 6:37 pm

I think you might be missing something. If this upgrade cost the same as buying all 3 products separately, it would be a terrible, terrible deal. It’s not an extra $180,000 (guesstimate of $90K for Smoke Advanced and $90K for Lustre), though…it’s $10K. Yes, there may be hardware upgrade costs involved, but you’d need those eventually anyway.

As a Flame artist who also knows Smoke pretty well, I’m really excited about Flame Premium. I love reels for compositing, but vastly prefer Smoke’s Editdesk and timeline for “lighter” work like finishing and mild color correction. If the new “Smoke Premium” had Flame’s caching in it, I would probably switch to it for 100% of my work. I totally agree with your “Lustre Node” idea!

If you think Flame is a grading powerhouse, you’ve never worked with clients that are used to grading on a DaVinci or Baselight. You can create any look imaginable, but it’s pretty easy to bog the system down with rendering.

Sapphire shouldn’t cost any more, as the price in the past for a sapphire flame license has been the same as a flame/smoke. I haven’t talked to their sales dept about it yet, though.

Come on Autodesk you need to LEAD by example, and not be LEAD.

Posted by qwertykeyboard on
September 13, 2010 at 9:30 pm

I’ve worked with some very respected film colorists who’ve worked on big hollywood films and won’t touch a grading panel.. They just use a mouse and keyboard. So I wouldn’t worry about buying a grading panel for lustre, it’s a matter of preference.

Posted by noone on
September 14, 2010 at 3:20 am

We’ve made improvements to the 3D Blur node in this extension. New modes were added and we worked on improving the performance (although we’re still not totally happy with it and would like to improve it again in a future release)